Monthly Archives: May 2010

The arcade downtown fills up with church light these summer mornings. Nobody’s on campus now except a few cute young juniors, clawing at their temples to try to make the words come out faster. It’s 80 degrees by 9 am and at Comet they’re serving an espresso called the hairbender—smooth as skyr (another new vice), […]

Around five in the morning Wednesday, I drove east, down in to Detroit. From Ann Arbor, I could see clear across the huge fertile basin, textured with soft treetops that a month ago were grey and scratchy. The cloud layer over Lake Huron was purple-blue and smooth, almost slick: just on the verge of changing from gas […]

It is just ludicrous here. I’m trying not to care about spring, because nature blogging is in even worse taste than poo blogging and sex blogging… but decay, sex and nature all come together in the form of these tulips that won’t die. Compost-fed and prurient. Down the street, there’s a whole bed of them […]

Stormy today, in a way that shakes the ground. I stayed home to feel the house rumble and watch the pale green leaves shake tapping windows. No sign of the next-door neighbor lady or her cat now: leaves intervene. I listened to the first minute of a Garth Brooks song about thunder, looking out the […]

Last Friday I drank some wine and took the iPod to the arboretum. Malbec and Morrissey: a florid pairing. Overstated. Lewd. Attention-needy. I used them to dull my senses—keep the birdsongs out of my ears and make the mind spacey enough that I wouldn’t get all emotional about the lilt of the magnolia petals and […]